three legs

Kicking that stool right out from under me.

Is it any suprise that privateers would want to misquote the creator of Social Security in order to tease the unwitting into thinking the system is supposed to evolve into the private sphere?

No, it isn't. So I am less shocked than sad to see this example of GOPropaganda, wherein Fox's Brit Hume evokes FDR as such:

Senate Democrats gathered at the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial today to invoke the image of FDR in calling on President Bush to remove private accounts from his Social Security proposal. But it turns out that FDR himself planned to include private investment accounts in the Social Security program when he proposed it.

In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, quote, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, quote, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

When in fact FDR said this:

In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.

Hume's patent cherry picking would be less disturbing if it weren't so similar to our leaders' similar deliberate misleads.

Here, FDR is approaching what we call the three-legged stool for retirement financial security. Ideally, we have our savings, private 401k like accounts, and social security (the last leg acting as a base net for those unfortunates that lack the prior two). In the beginning of social security, the plan was not going to cover people already old, so the government helped provide pensions unrelated to social security (which would build up funds through tax). After a few years, eg- once social security gained feet, the temporary fix would not be needed. Mr. Hume conveniently makes it look like FDR said social security would not be needed. Jerk.


Reminds me of Bush's equating federal workers' 401k-like plans to social security. Somehow, he forgot to detail that the 401k-like savings are in addition to social security--just as the Democrats propose. Three legs.

It is no more complex to describe Bush's scheme as t osay he want to saw off one leg.